Godzilla

The original that launched 50 years of comic monster movies with blokes in rubber suits kicking over Lego versions of Tokyo (and a big, dim Hollywood remake) is a surprisingly sober piece of work, the equal of some of the better US 50s creature features.

Director Ishiro Honda was a former assistant to the revered Akira Kurosawa and the dignified Takashi Shimura (a Kurosawa regular since Seven Samurai - made in the same year) lends the film gravity as a thoughtful scientist in this tale of a sea-monster awakened by an H-bomb, a clear allegory of tampering with the scientific unknown.

The film was made just after the American occupation ended and was inspired by a US atomic test. If the scenes of terror and panic seem unusually realistic, many of the actors and extras would have been through unimaginable horrors in the previous decade, as the dialogue sometimes reminds you ("Evacuate Tokyo! Not again.")

The film, seen for the first time in the west in its original form, has its rough edges but the best scenes are accomplished and classy. The BFI is also releasing Honda's colour sci-fi alien robot movie The Mysterians, made three years later.